Josette Duncan graduated with a PhD in History (History of Medicine) from the University of Warwick in the UK.

Her thesis explored the transformation of public health and medical structures in the Mediterranean island colonies of Malta, Cyprus and the Ionian Islands during the 19th century.

It focuses on the Mediterranean region as the centre of British imperial politics where the island colonies played an important economic and political role. This work explored the idea that the Mediterranean region and island colonies became a cordon sanitaire between the ‘pestilential’ East and the Maghreb and ‘civilised healthy’ Europe.

This research contributed to the literature on colonial historiography and colonial medicine, arguing that geographically and ideologically, the study of Mediterranean colonies denotes a grey area within our understanding of the concept of the ‘West’ and that of ‘European colonies’.

In these island colonies, the major English health reforms were enforced by total state intervention and centralisation. Her research also highlighted the differences in management of hospitals and medical charities and, more generally, between the administration of public health in England and in the Mediterranean colonies.

This was illustrated through the use of small case studies on the history of medicine of the colonies: such as the history of quarantine, isolation and segregation of prostitutes and lepers, the histories of medical charities and government charitable institutions and the study of medical travellers and their perception of the south Mediterranean climate.

Duncan was sponsored by Steps, part-financed by the European Social Fund (ESF) under Operational Programme II – Cohesion Policy 2007-2013, ‘Empowering People for More Jobs and a Better Quality of Life’.